A/N: I am trying so hard to keep this story updated for you guys, and I so appreciate all the favorite, follows, reads, and reviews. Thank you so much.
The poll still hasn't been updated yet (I'm so sorry), but just know that any prompts you have recently submitted have been added to the prompt list and will be on the next poll, which will likely be updated with the next chapter of this fic.
Special thanks to the guest who sent in today's awesome prompt!
I'm feeling kind of shaky about this one, so I hope I did it justice. Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts. :)
Also... HAPPY (ALMOST) SUPERGIRL MONDAY!
Prompt: This would be set during the time Kara was under the Black Mercy. What if Alex was sent to the Phantom Zone before Kara could reach her? Now Kara has to find a way to save Alex and Alex has to fight other prisoners to stay alive in the Phantom Zone until Kara can save them both from the Black Mercy. (So, basically Kara can't wake up from the Black Mercy without saving Alex because Alex's mind would still be trapped if she did).
"Alex!" Kara screamed, reality breaking in, crashing down on her in color and pain.
"Kara!" Alex yelled back and reached out to her sister. The guards slammed Alex back into the ground and she winced, a sharp, white pain shooting through her abdomen.
Their fingers brushed, just a second of contact, a sliver of comfort spread in limbo between them before the room shook and the guards closed in.
Their hands separated, the moment broken and shattered as quickly as it had come.
A guard moved Alex roughly, shoving a knee into her stomach and yanking her back up as she doubled over. He dragged her onto the transporter and slammed the button. A blue beam shot upward; air howled; Alex disappeared, banished to the phantom zone.
Kara starred into the empty space Alex had occupied just moments earlier. She could feel her heart pounding in chest as dust rose and fell from the quakes that had racked the building; racked her home. But it wasn't real.
Her brain was screaming.
It wasn't real.
She wanted this home, this family, this life.
It wasn't real.
But Alex was.
"What did you do to her?" Kara yelled, her voice vibrating through the still air. It was too perfect, it was too fragile. Already, the colors were fading, her time waning. After Alex's appearance Kara's mind couldn't accept the façade, subconsciously and beyond her control, her body was fighting the parasite, and if Kara didn't find Alex soon, the agent would be trapped in the delusions indefinitely, maybe even forever.
"She's going to the Phantom Zone, we're safe now."
"I have to go," Kara said, her eyes darting around the scene. Her stomach twisted at the contrast; the juxtaposition of her once warm home to the betrayal she felt burning in her core; the coldness that made her stomach drop and her breath catch. She was losing them all over again. "I have to find her," Kara choked out; Alex her sister, Alex her lifeline, Alex the only reason she managed to stay afloat sometimes.
"It was merely a nightmare," the figure of Alura said, and Kara refused to think of the form as her mother any longer.
The brunette stepped forward, placed a hand on Kara's shoulder. "Your fever from earlier must have returned."
Simultaneously, Kara wanted to lean into the touch and recoil from it. She squeezed her eyes shut and stumbled back, shaking her head. She swallowed hard.
A shade of color was stripped form the vibrancy of her surroundings. More time was being lost.
Time. She needed more time. She needed to buy more time.
"Okay," Kara said and it felt bitter in her mouth; like relenting, like giving up. But maybe, if she played along with their façade, if she kept it up a little longer, she could get to Alex before it was too late and Kara's body pulled away before her sister's mind could come home, too.
/
Gravel bit into Alex's knees as she crashed onto the ground. Gravity felt heavy; her lungs tight. She wiped her palms against the fabric of her tactical suit and small black particles fell back to the dust surrounding her feet. A cough heaved through her lungs. She brought a palm to her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut, fending off the pounding pulsating through her skull. The sound of crunching gravel pulled her eyes open.
She looked around, saw a shadow approaching in the darkness of the barren wasteland she'd been banished to. Before she'd even had the chance to focus on the creature, it descended on her and a sharp pain split from her head down her vertebrae.
Her body stiffened before her training immediately took over, she landed a kick into the core of the alien, sending it off balance and stumbling backward. The being growled, its razor teeth made apparent in the reflective light of surrounding moons, as it moved to land another hit to the back of Alex's head. Alex tugged the gun from the holster settled across her hip. She fired a clip into alien's chest. An aggravated gurgling sound was produced by the creature before it ripped the bullets from its scaly skin and sent the small pieces of metal clattering to the ground.
Its claw collided with her abdomen, sent her doubling over as another being appeared and shoved her back, pushing Alex onto the ground. Dust rose, clouded her eyes and filled her nose, her mouth; descending on her senses.
The creatures communicated in a tongue foreign to Alex's ears. The sneers and sharp tone was evident and she felt fear spiking in her chest, fusing with the pain radiating through her cells, reminding her painfully, that after all, she was only human.
/
The bed was soft beneath Kara, her mother's figure hovering above her as she placed a blanket over the girl. Kara's heart clenched painfully. This isn't real. It isn't real. She repeated in her head over and over so she wouldn't forget. It could be—it would be—so easy to just close her eyes and let everything bad fade away, but it wasn't real.
It wasn't real.
Beneath the blanket she pinched herself, fiddling with the fabric above her. She needed to get to her family's database, so she could uncover the code to transport herself to the phantom zone and get to Alex. Alex. Alex. Alex.
Alex and Earth and Supergirl: those things were real.
/
Blood. It permeated across Alex's taste buds as she received another blow to the head and sprawled across the ground. She was completely vulnerable. She was going to die.
More creatures had gathered, varying screeches filled the air. They grated through her ear, making her cringe. She braced herself for another blow, spitting blood while doing so and turning to her side.
Humans weren't welcomed here; in the Phantom Zone, humans were sentenced to death.
She bit her lip as a hit was delivered to her side and a crack punctured the darkness. She was going to die.
She closed her eyes and hoped Kara would still get home.
/
Kara shifted. She was pretending to sleep, but had instead spent the past half hour determining the location of the forms masquerading as her family. They were gathered in her room, looming over her. Their presence was suffocating.
She needed to get them out.
She needed to get to Alex.
A tremor shook the room, more color was torn from the scene.
Beneath the sheets she squeezed her hands into fists, so that her nails dug into her palm, leaving deep impressions in the soft skin.
/
From the darkness emerged a voice, feminine and sharp and demanding, and with it, an air of cognizance pervaded Alex's aching head. The creatures—or demons from hell as Alex liked to think of them—scattered.
She groaned and let her head drop to the ground, bringing her knees toward her chest. Illuminated from the distant light of stars and from the edge of her peripheral vision, Alex caught sight of a figure, the one that'd saved her. As she panted and pressed a hand against her side, the agent made out brown curls and sliver of silver. She wondered why that looked so familiar as the form disappeared into the darkness once again and Alex felt her eyes slipped closed.
/
Kara woke up, breath heaving in her chest. Darkness had fallen over Krypton, sending shadows sprawling across her bedroom.
Her heart pounded. The room was empty. Hours must have passed; her stomach lurched as she thought of Alex.
Slowly, as though not to create noise, Kara eased herself off the mattress. Her feet pattered against the ground, the coldness spreading across her skin. She shuffled through the room and out the door, skimming around the light in the hall that always drew long shadows. Beyond the window she could make out the city lights of Krypton. For a splinter of a second she was frozen. Her home had been so beautiful. But then a flutter of wind caught her hair through the open window and jolted her into action.
Each scuffle of her foot against the tile sent her muscles tensing. Just one misstep and this could all be over. She passed the table she'd once eaten dinner at with her parents every day for the first twelve years of her life and ran her hand along the hallway walls. It lacked the warmth it'd once emitted, now all Kara could think about were the parasitic form emulating her family, her home—and it all felt wrong, made her head and heart ache. She pulled her eyes away and sprinted the last few steps into her family's library.
Kara bypassed the virtual database, it was too loud and could take minutes to produce the specific result she needed. Time she didn't have.
Instead, her feet carried her to the shelves housing old books. As a child she'd once curled up against her mother as Alura paged through a government manual on the transportation system, reading to Kara's dad about the implementation of a specific code to trigger the activation of the device. They'd done stuff like that a lot when Kara was little—read and learned together, as a family—and the memories swirled through the blonde's head as she skimmed the spines of each book.
Her eyes caught the Kryptonese title and she eased the text from the shelf. The pages flapped quietly as Kara scanned as quickly as she could, absorbing the words as they flipped by. Finally, she found the code, repeated it in her head and committed the combination of letters and numbers to memory.
/
The air felt impossibly heavier as Alex came back into consciousness, peeling her eyelids open. Somehow, even after the hours that had crept by, the atmosphere was still dark. Alex rolled her eyes.
She let out a hard breath as she sat up, joints popping and cracking, aches radiating through her core and limbs. Her palms pressed into the dirt as she eased herself into a standing position and straightened up, taking account for her injuries and deciding, with a shrug, that she'd been through worse.
Kara must be winning, Alex though with a smirk. The figure that'd saved her—it had to be some kind of extension of Kara, some fragment of her mind reaching out to keep Alex alive.
Light glinted off Alex's hair as she began to walk collecting sharp rocks as she moved, all she had to do was stay alive a little longer.
Unfortunately, not a hundred steps later the distinct growl of the creatures she'd encountered earlier pierced the air. She rolled her eyes again and spun around, bracing for another fight.
"Just stay alive," she murmured, hoping that maybe this time experience would make her stronger.
/
On light feet, Kara rushed through the deserted halls of the high council. With each passing door the knot in her stomach grew tighter and tighter. Her stride increased, her steps quickened until she tore through the building, footsteps now loud and reverberating.
Tall white pillars blurred in the side of her visions, reflecting starlight from outer space.
Her lungs burned, her muscle ached in fatigue for one of the few times in her adult life. The colors of her surroundings were paling, she had to get to Alex, she had to get to Alex. The façade was broken now, her desperation seeping through every cell of her being like water on paper.
She forced herself to go faster, heels kicking, shoes squeaking. Beneath her, the ground quivered.
In the darkness, she fumbled with the door handled, arms straining as she yanked it open and the marble groaned in resistance. Kara scrambled to the podium, flipped open a small silver box and punched in the code.
A sigh of relief escaped her lungs as an affirmatory ring resounded through the air. Almost there. Almost there.
Kara stood, reached for the button, felt her fingers skim the surface, when a force knocked her to the ground.
The marble stung Kara's shoulder as she crashed down, opened her eyes to her mother's face with dark, inky orbs for eyes. Kara bit her lip and kicked free, thrashing with all her force. She escaped with a sharp elbow and slammed her hand onto the button, sending blue light radiating from the transporter.
The creature attached itself onto Kara's leg, its tortuous form morphing into its true dark and slimy parasitic figure. Kara dug her heel into its limb and the creature recoiled with a shriek that made Kara's ears ring.
She lunged into the light.
/
A sharp whimper escaped Alex's lips as she felt the bite of the ground. Again.
This time though, she rolled out of the way of the monster's next hit and its momentum carried the demon to the ground beside her. She slammed a rock into its head and scampered up. She was limping and bleeding but at least she was alive, she decided, as she turned around to block the kick of a humanoid-ish species with silvery skin and dark, maroon eyes. She really didn't know how anything survived a day in this hellish wasteland.
She dodged a second hit and watched as acid dripped from an alien's mouth and literally—literally—burned the ground. Alex probably would have laughed at the cliché if it wasn't rapidly approaching and pushing her down.
Dirt caked her palms as she shoved herself upward again, doubling over when the first creature dragged a claw across her abdomen.
She let out a cry, collapsing forward at the same time a boom shook the atmosphere and the ground trembled and specks of navy blue were pulled from the sky, the surroundings beginning to blur like mixing paints.
Kara landed, ground crunching beneath her feet, her attention immediately drawn to a prisoner brawl just meters away.
Alex was pinned by a large creature, its weight pressing onto her chest. She wheezed, kicking in an attempt to free herself, but the alien was too big. Another being descended, bashing her head against the dirt. Growing desperate, she flailed as her breaths became quick and shallow, the ground shaking beneath her.
"Alex," Kara yelled, her voice like a light in the darkness.
"I'm over here," Alex called back. The softness of her voice was lost in the night air.
"Alex," Kara screamed again.
"I'm here," Alex breathed, "I'm right here." She groaned as she tried to slip from beneath the alien, its presence swallowing her body, crushing her into the dirt, making her injuries ooze blood.
Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, the ground began to tear beneath them.
Alex heard the crack of skin to skin contact, forcing her eyes open and sputtering for air when the creature fell off of her. She squinted up, vision blurry, unable to make out the reason the alien had been pushed aside.
"I'm here," Alex yelled, her voice croaky and hoarse.
Kara's head snapped in her direction, sprinting to close the distance between them.
The delusions had been entirely shattered, the terrain shriveling beneath them, the dream-like scene nearly a bright white.
Kara dashed, ignoring the fire in her lungs. Mere seconds remained.
The cluster of aliens was too dense, she wasn't going to make it.
She was never going to make it. Her heart formed a lump in her throat.
"Stop!" A voice yelled in fluent Kryptonese, the timbre so warm and familiar Kara nearly paused.
The rest of the aliens froze, as though the voice possessed some reign over them. The ground splintered between the sisters, Kara dove across the gap as a whirling sound shrieked through the air. Her hands clasped around Alex, holding tight to the familiar skin. Alex's palms were cold and coated in a mix of blood and dirt, but Kara couldn't think of a time she'd been happier to feel them.
As the sisters swirled away Kara caught sight of the woman who produced the voice; the splitting image of her mother, but with a silver strand of curls. Astra.
Kara swore the woman gave a small smile, before the Danvers sisters disappeared from view and the universe was consumed by a blinding white light.
/
Kara's eyes shot open and she lurched upward, blinking rapidly as her vision scanned the room. Immediately, Winn was at her side, helping pull the oxygen mask from her head.
She sat up, gasping for breath, chest heaving. Her stomach dropped, the weight of the past events descending, the loss of her family once more burning raw and new through every fiber of her being.
Bile rose in her throat and she pressed her shaking hands against the examination table. After losing her mother, her father, the life she could never have all over again, she had almost lost Alex, and the realization came like a stab through her numbness.
She shifted her gaze, caught Alex's eyes from across the room.
The brunette moved over, closing the distance between them until they were mere inches away.
"Every time I think of my family, I see them," Kara whispered and only Alex could hear. "With black eyes and cold hands."
Alex didn't know what to say, so she wrapped Kara's hands in her own. "Okay," she said softly. "It'll change. It'll be okay."
"It feels like I just lost them again."
"I know," Alex said, holding Kara's gaze through watery eyes.
"And I almost lost you."
"But you didn't."
Alex patted Kara's thigh to pull the distant feature from her sister's gaze. "It's gonna be okay," Alex reassured, squeezing her sister's hand.
Kara took a deep breath as if to steel herself, and stood. "Who did this to me?" she asked, her voice stormy. Her gaze a fusion of anger and hurt.
"Non," Alex answered.
"Where is he?"